Political Science

This seminar introduces the scientific study of European politics. The course applies the basic theoretical tools, concepts, and empirical methods of comparative politics to analyze, understand, and explain some of the systematic relationships that exist between economic, political, and social variables within European countries and the European Union. The seminar is divided thematically into three parts. Following a brief introduction to the course and review of the comparative method, the first section covers the origins of European states and democracy in Europe as well as the democratic transition processes of the ‘third wave’ in Southern, Central, and Eastern Europe. The second section focuses on the domestic political institutions of liberal European democracies and the variation that exists between them and the institutions of the European Union. While the course covers country-specific knowledge, the course is not an in-depth study of individual countries. Instead, the course discusses the similarities and differences in the executive-legislative relations, electoral systems, and party systems across Europe. The final section of the seminar deals with the effects and policy consequences that the variation in these institutional arrangements has on government accountability, representation, economic performance, political stability, and various economic and social policies.

This course provides the fundamental knowledge for the understanding of France's foreign policy in the Middle East from 1995 to the present. It weaves a panorama of the policy deployed in the region from the presidency of Jacques Chirac and the renewal of the Arab policy of France to draw up the assessments and perspectives. This course provides the cardinal elements of understanding the elaboration and application of France's Middle Eastern strategy. French foreign policy is examined through the prism of a chronological triptych that corresponds to three inflections of the foreign policy implemented: a posture inscribed in the Gaullist tradition with President Jacques Chirac (1995-2007); followed by the "Westernist" posture leading to a progressive alignment with American and Israeli strategies during the presidencies of Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande (2007-2017); finally, a willingness to return to a Gaullist position attempted by President Emmanuel Macron (2017-2022). In view of the breadth of the theme and the area covered, the teaching involves many disciplines, such as history, geography, economics, and international law, with a clear predominance of international relations and foreign policy analysis.

This course is a collective exercise to establish a portrait of each of the past ten presidential elections in France and create a systematic comparison with the 2021-2022 campaign and the 2022 vote. Through close investigation of these elections, the course examines fundamental, far-reaching elements in order to better understand the 2022 election. Studying the candidates, their platforms, their profiles, non-votes, votes against the system, the campaign, the context, and the debates, it identifies the most relevant criteria and establishes a description of each election to draw conclusions as to the elements that characterize the current campaign.